Mistakes We Make
by jellyjay
Summary: Everything she's done since she joined the 104th trainee squad has been a mistake. She had it all planned out before they started this mission, but she has made a series of stupid, stupid slip-ups, and now she has to pay the price.


_Mistakes We Make_

V.

She's selected for her mission when she's eight years old.

She doesn't really know what that means, but she joins two other children who are about the same age, and a strange man with hairy arms takes them up to the mountains where he promises that they will learn to be the strongest of mankind, warriors without equal and as fearsome as gods. "You'll have to train though," he tells them. "But I promise that it will be worth it."

At the time, Annie thinks it can't be worse than what her father's already put her through. She already knows what it feels like to train until she can't move, so this can't be much worse than that, but she's wrong.

They learn about what they are the hard way: they transform into their titan forms and train in the mountains for days at a time. They fight each other as monsters, and it's only when their false bodies are damaged so much that they are no longer viable that their teacher allows them to rest. They kill each other over and over and over again, and they cut each other out of the corpses of their titans, sometimes leaving limbs behind for perhaps half a day of rest before they are made to rinse and repeat.

It's bitter work.

.

They are given their first task two years after they begin.

By now, they control their titans as if they are controlling their own bodies, not false ones. Their forms are unique and they know now how to use them to their advantage in most situations.

Bertholdt Fubar is a giant as a person, and similarly, he is a giant as a titan. He is more than double the size of tallest class of titan, and their teacher thinks he'll be tall enough to peer over the walls. His height makes it a challenge for anything to damage him, but he loses his advantage in anything involving speed and distance.

Reiner Braun is a hulk of a person, and his titan is armoured. He has learned how best to build his momentum and break through any obstacle, including the walls. The armour connected to the muscle of his false body makes it difficult for anything to access the weak spot at the back of his neck, but he is useless in a fight that requires precision.

Annie's is unique. It is not colossal like Bertholdt's or armoured like Reiner's. It looks just like a regular titan, only female and without skin. Her false body allows her to move faster and quicker than the other two, and unlike them, she can fight in it as easily as she fights in her true body.

They take down Wall Maria like it's nothing more than sand: Bertholdt kicks in the gate and destroys the canons on the walls. Annie brings the horde. Reiner destroys the wall.

They're not told exactly what it is they've done, but they return to the mountains to find their teacher full of praise and congratulations. "You are well on your way to becoming warriors," he tells them, sounding almost gleeful. "Well done, children. It's easy, isn't it?"

They can see the fires and the broken walls from the distance, and Annie looks at their handiwork and thinks yes, she supposes it is.

x

_I've never so adored you_

x

IV.

They join the military and begin their second mission when they each turn twelve.

They are a team, and the training squad they join is the same, but while Bertholdt and Reiner begin their first day as friends from the same town, she chooses to stand alone, well away from them and as if she has never met them before. They don't argue – they have known her for four years now, and they have always understood and accepted that she prefers to keep to herself.

It's a blur of a first week: there are drills and laps and more drills, and then there are lessons about strategy, lessons about titans, introductory sessions to the 3D manoeuvre gear – pointless things, she thinks, because she knows what's coming and that none of this will slow mankind's demise.

The amount of training they do here doesn't matter now, and when she and Bertholdt and Reiner complete their second mission, it won't matter ever again.

She is a monster playing soldier with children, and she already knows how easy it is to win.

.

Reiner and Bertholdt fit in well enough with the 104th that Annie forgets sometimes that they're outsiders too. They scrap with the boys and are gentlemen for the girls, and they're so _human_ that it bothers her because she knows that they – the three of them – will one day destroy the lives of everyone here.

She keeps herself distant on purpose, because while she may not care much for the lives of the other trainees, she's honourable enough not to pretend. She's an honest person, but withholding information is not the same as lying, and she's not going to lie to them or to herself by masquerading as a soldier.

Reiner, evidently, disagrees. He doesn't say anything to her though. Instead, he shoves another boy at her – the loud mouthed, impressionable, suicidal bastard, Eren Jaeger – and he calls her a slacker and claims that they should teach her a lesson.

Annie doesn't quite know what he's doing because she knows for a fact that he knows it's a terrible idea to face her in combat. Eren doesn't know this, but she would have thought he'd save one of his new 'friends' from a painful and embarrassing defeat.

"You know what to do, right, Annie?" Eren asks her, moving into a ready stance with the prop knife pointed at her. "Here I come!"

He's down literally a second later.

Annie glares at Reiner, wordlessly asking him what the hell he thinks he's doing. He answers with a sort of shrug, but it does nothing ease her irritation. "Can I go now?"

"You have to take the knife off him," is all Reiner says.

She scowls and turns her attention back to Eren.

His eyes widen a fraction and he takes a cautionary step backwards. "W-wait, Annie, there's a way to do this right – "

Annie's not listening. She wraps her fingers around the side of his face and kicks at the back of his knees, and the flip backwards is spectacular to watch. Annie sees it happen in slow motion, and she slaps the prop knife from his fingers as he falls to the ground. Her glare turns back to Reiner, and she tosses it at him. "You're turn."

"Uh – "

"Do it Reiner," Eren interrupts from the ground. "You're gonna teach her the responsibilities of being a soldier, right?"

Reiner hesitates – Annie can see a twinge of fear in his eyes – but he swallows and nods. He takes a single step forward, and then he's on his back. The prop knife in her hand again and it's over before anyone really knows what happened.

.

They gather in the mess hall for dinner and, to no one's surprise, Eren and Jean have started another argument. This happens at least once a week, and Annie's been done with their shit for about three months now that the most she does is roll her eyes and turn back to her drink.

Until Eren wraps his fingers around the side of Jean's face and aims a kick at the back of his knees.

It's sloppy as hell, but that's her move, and she raises a curious eyebrow to see how the fight plays out from here.

"What the _fuck_?!" bellows Jean, and Eren replies with a smug snort.

"I learned that move while you were slacking off," he snaps. "If you think living comfortably and doing whatever the hell you like is reality, then you're not fit to call yourself a soldier."

Annie blinks at the scene. There's an odd sensation in her gut, and she doesn't quite know what it is. It's an odd mix and she thinks the best way to describe is that she's surprised and impressed at the same time. She thinks it's because he watched her, and listened to her, and learned from her example.

She thinks it's pride.

He might be a loud mouthed, impressionable, suicidal bastard, but yes, she'll admit that she's proud of Eren Jaeger.

.

She offers to teach him how to fight against her better judgement.

He's a good kid, she can admit that; he's childlike in the way that he listens to everything she has to say even if there isn't much and she just can't help it – he just wants to learn.

He'll be dead in a few years because of her. The least she can do is give him this.

x

_I'm twisting allegories now_

x

III.

Eren starts calling her his friend shortly after she begins to teach him how to fight.

It's a poor decision, but she supposes there's no harm done until she notices that other people have started referring to her as their friend too, and all of a sudden, she's not sure if she's comfortable with this. She does her best to keep to her distance as she's always done, but they seem to think that that's okay – she's just someone who prefers to be alone, but that doesn't make her not their friend.

_No_, she thinks. _That's not how it is at all. I'm not one of you_.

But they're three years into training, and she may _think_ she's not one of them, but she _knows _that she is. This was not how she intended for things to happen, but it's too late to do anything about it now.

Eren Jaeger has appointed himself her mentee.

Mikasa Ackerman calls her a friendly rival.

Armin Arlert thinks that she is kinder than she lets on.

Mina Carolina calls her one of her best friends.

She wants to yell at them to stop. Stop this. _I'm not one of you_. But she can't, and she knows why: she's grown to think of them as her friends too. She's never had so many, and she's ashamed of herself for admitting that she enjoys their company because _how fucking weak is that? _

She's going to kill everyone here.

How can she call herself one of them?

.

Reiner receives a message a week before graduation night, and he passes it on to her by 'accidentally' bumping into her on the way to breakfast and slipping it neatly into her jacket pocket. It's been a few years since they've heard from their teacher, but the message is short, and Annie reads over it under the table.

_It's time._

_._

The siege on Wall Maria begins just like the siege on Wall Rose: Bertholdt appears in his titan form seemingly out of nowhere, and he takes out the canons and kicks down the gate. There's no need for Annie to gather a horde this time, because there are already titans outside the walls, and with the gate destroyed, they flood into Trost.

The uproar begins. The civilians panic. The soldiers panic. Everything has gone haywire and for now, the job is done. Later, when Trost has run out of manpower, Reiner will make his move, but for now, they head into what's left of the city to play their roles as soldiers.

The city doesn't run out of manpower though.

It's a mess, yes, and a good number of soldiers and civilians have died already – but there's a flash of lightning from somewhere amongst the ruins, and Reiner and Bertholdt and Annie have seen each other transform enough times to know exactly what it is.

There is another titan shifter amongst their ranks.

Their teacher will be interested to hear about this.

.

They find out later that the shifter is Eren.

Annie doesn't quite know what to make of this at first, because it's _Eren_, and it's obvious from the situation that he'd had no idea shifting was a thing he could do in the first place. She thinks it's remarkable that he could control his false form so well after only a couple of transformations and yes, their teacher will be _very _interested in learning about him.

Their mission is a failure, thanks to him, but the gravity of what they've done doesn't hit home until things have calmed down enough for the clean up.

The dead are everywhere. The city is littered with blood and broken bodies, and the worst of it is that she knows who many of them were. They burn them because there are too many to bury.

Marco Bodt is dead.

Thomas Wagner is dead.

Mina Carolina is dead.

This was not her doing, but she hates herself for it because it may as well have been. Mina and Thomas and Marco were her comrades. Her _friends. _And she steals a glance at the survivors and wonders who of them will be next. Who will they have to mourn because of her?

Bitterly, she wonders when she had let herself become so soft.

x

_I want to complicate you_

x

II.

Things are still a wreck, but the graduates of the 104th trainee squad still have a choice to make. They're given a couple of days of respite after the Battle for Trost but Annie still finds it ironic that they're required to discuss their futures so soon after many of their comrades have lost theirs.

Many of them have been influenced by Eren's jackass opinions, so the majority of the ones she considers friends have set their minds on the Survey Corps. It's stupid, she thinks, that they're so easy to persuade – and even stupider that she wants to object.

_Don't do this_. _I don't want to see anymore of you die. I don't want to be the one who kills you – _

But she doesn't say anything. How can she?

.

The Survey Corps capture a pair of titans during the Battle of Trost, and she sends word to her teacher who tells her that she must kill them both.

So she does, and on the day of their graduation (their _real_ graduation – one they don't intend to ruin by letting titans into the city), she stands next to Armin and Connie at an investigation for their murder. It's odd to think that they're really putting so much effort into the deaths of two titans when all this time they've been learning to kill them, but no one will be catching her out today. She's made sure of that.

"What did you think?" Connie asks quietly, while they wait their turn. "About everyone joining the Survey Corps, I mean."

Annie gives him a slight shrug. "Nothing in particular."

Connie pauses. "You're joining the Military Police, aren't you? ...Maybe I should too."

She scoffs. "If someone told you to die, would you do it?"

He looks at her like she's lost her mind. "What? Of course not."

"Then why don't you make your own decision?" she asks without looking at him. She gives Armin a sidelong glance. "Armin, what about you?"

Armin hesitates, and he moves his gaze to the floor before he answers. "I think that if you know why you have to die, then there'll come a time when you must. N-not that I want to," he adds hastily.

"Hm." Annie breathes a quiet sigh. "So you've made your choice."

"Yeah," he mumbles. "I've been thinking about it for a while."

There's a pause before Annie speaks again. "You're weak. But you've got guts," she mutters, and Armin smiles a little and turns his head to face her.

"Thank you," he says, a little unsurely. It's probably the closest thing she's come to complimenting him, and he seems to take that in his stride. He hesitates before he continues. "Annie, you're actually pretty nice, huh?"

She blinks and, for the first time since the conversation started, turns her head to look at him properly.

"It seems like you don't want us to join the Survey Corps," he says quietly. "Is there a particular reason you want to join the Military Police?"

Annie takes her turn to hesitate, because no, she doesn't want them to join the Survey Corps because she knows what her next mission is, and it may mean she has to kill them all, and yes, she has to join the Military Police so she can bring down the last of the three walls once Reiner and Bertholdt take care of Wall Maria.

She turns her head again to look straight ahead. "Not really," she mumbles at last. "I just want to live."

(She's not lying. It's the closest to the truth she can get.)

.

She's told that Eren must be captured, and she will earn her rank as a warrior once she brings him back to the mountains.

It's stupid, she thinks. She doesn't care about the rank anymore. She doesn't want to lie anymore. She doesn't want to kill any of her friends. She just wants to go home, and if taking Eren to the mountains will let her do that, then so be it.

Bertholdt and Reiner have joined the Survey Corps as well, so once the company leaves Wall Maria on their mission to reclaim Eren's home town and the secrets in his basement, she pursues them on her own. She expects that, as part of the mission, they know where he's placed in the company, so she heads for the left flank first where she knows Reiner is.

The goal is to capture Eren. That's it. She doesn't want to kill anyone that she doesn't have to, so she rampages through their ranks, crushing only those who mean to crush her. It's self defense more than it is offense, until she comes to a soldier whose fallen off his horse.

She stops. She thinks she knows this one. It's hard to tell with the hood over their face, so she crouches and picks gently at the fabric with two gigantic fingers.

It's Armin.

Armin, her friend. Armin, the strategist. Armin, who will blow her cover if she doesn't crush him now.

She should crush him now.

She doesn't.

x

_Don't let me do this to myself_

x

I.

Everything she's done since she joined the 104th trainee squad has been a mistake. She had it all planned out before they started this mission, but she has made a series of stupid, _stupid _slip-ups, and now she has to pay the price.

She never should have taught Eren how to fight; never should have been so open with Armin – she never should have let anyone get close, but she did, and it has come to this.

She knows, from the second Armin hisses her name, that he's figured her out. Of course he has. He has more brains than anyone in the 104th, and she should have killed him when she had the chance, because he's here in an alleyway in the Stohess district, asking her to "help Eren escape."

"Escape where?" she asks – except she's not really asking because this isn't about helping Eren escape at all.

"We just need to hide for a while," Armin tells her. "They're going to kill him, Annie. Please. We need your help."

_No, you don't_, she thinks. _I know you don't. _But there's a part of her that's still hoping he's telling the truth. Maybe it is just an escape plan – maybe they really do need her help. She's told so many lies and killed so many of their people – was it too much to still hope that they didn't know? That they still trusted her and believed in her as a friend and comrade?

The situation has spiralled so out of control that she doesn't know what to do anymore. She's done with this: done with lying and killing her own people, but she wants to go home and bringing Eren to her teacher is her ticket there.

She sighs and sets down the rifle, fishing the little silver ring out of her pocket and slipping it on. "Fine," she mutters. "I'll help."

_I don't want to do this anymore._

_._

She and Armin regroup with Eren and Mikasa a couple of streets down, and they hiss details of the "plan" to each other before they head off. They explain that Jean has taken Eren's place for the mean time, and that the idea is to use the layout of the streets help get Eren away from the city. They walk for about a kilometer along suspiciously empty streets, before they come to a stairwell leading deep underground.

"We go through here," Armin says. "The remains of an underground city are down here. It'll take us straight to the other gate."

They start down the stairs, but Annie hesitates at the top of the stairwell.

"Annie." Eren looks up at her. "What the hell? Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark."

She pauses. "Yes, I am," she answers slowly. She fiddles with the ring on her index finger. "I'm sure a brave and suicidal bastard like you wouldn't understand how a girl as frail as me feels."

Eren snorts loudly. "Please. A girl who can flip a man twice her size isn't weak. Stop screwing around."

She doesn't move. "No. I'm not coming. If we're not going above ground, I won't help."

"What are you saying?" Eren demands. "Get down here!"

Annie almost flinches at the look on his face. He knows. Of course he knows. She'd given away so much, but it almost hurts that he's doing everything he can to believe that it's not true.

"Don't shout, Eren!" scolds Mikasa, and Annie snorts.

"Why shouldn't he?" she asks. "For some reason, there hasn't been anyone around for a while." She pauses. "I'm hurt." (It's true, although she has no right to be). "When did you start looking at me like that, Armin?"

"Annie," he says, and his voice cracks. "Why did you have Marco's manoeuvre gear?"

She looks away. "I found it," she mutters.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Armin's voice is hollow with disbelief.

Annie says nothing. There are two boys standing in the dark that she never wanted anything to do with, but they are her friends and they trusted her, and she can't even deal with their faces right now because they look at her as if it can't be true – even though they know it is.

_I'm sorry_, she thinks. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but this is the way it is._

She thinks of Mina, of Marco, and of Thomas – thinks of the days she taught Eren to fight and of the respect he'd held for her, and of the way Armin had always believed she was a good person. She thinks of everyone she's liked to, and of everyone she's killed, and of everyone she's going to kill today.

_I'm sorry._

But it's too late now.

"Oi, Annie!" Eren looks furious and desperate, and he starts back up the stairs. "There's still a chance you're just an idiot, so get down here right now! You just need to come down the stairs - you can prove it's not you!"

"I can't," she says quietly. "I have failed to become a warrior."

She's failed to do anything right for this mission.

There's nothing left now.

x

_Well I never really thought that you'd come tonight  
While the crown hangs heavy on either side  
Give me one last kiss while we're far too young to die_

_Far too young to die_

x

**Some Notes:**

**1) This started off as a drabble, and then it turned out to be 4000 words long.**

**2) To Bay, who I usually I annoy to beta my SnK stuff - this thing is the longest thing I've written in one go, and I know you're busy, so yep, I'm not going to make you beta something this long :P**

**3) The song is Far Too Young to Die, by Panic! At the Disco.**

**4) It's 1.40am and I have to be up at 6 tomorrow hahahaha this goddamn series**


End file.
